Pacific Steel
by Illyria Lives
Summary: Charlie Kenton is called back from extended leave of absence for a special project with the PPDC, a project that requires he has a strong drift-compatible copilot… but he never expected this pilot to be his abandoned son Max. Together they are given an experimental jaeger, Atom Dancer, with an AI of incomparable strength. Together, a band of castoffs, they try to save the world.
1. Chapter 1

**I couldn't get this out of my head. Here, enjoy.**

* * *

Charlie Kenton leaned back in his seat, eyes wearily closed. He sighed and stretched out his legs, getting comfortable in his chair that brought up memories of visits to the dentist's office.

"He should be here any minute," his handler told him.

Charlie made a dismissive noise in response, giving her a blaming look. They had been waiting for his drift candidate for over twenty minutes, and he still hadn't shown. Not a good first impression, especially considering that Charlie didn't even have a name yet for this rookie, only two numbers: 50 and 49. The first number was the number of times the kid had gone in a simulator drop. The second number was the amount of times he came out of those simulations triumphant. Charlie was achingly curious about that one flop, but for the most part he was pissed about having to wait.

Not that Charlie was rarely pissed, however. He was pissed when, following Finn's retirement from Ranger to Ops, they put him on indefinite leave. He was pissed when they gave good ole Noisy Boy to some new hotshot team, let them put their grubby mental fingerprints all over his precious Mark IV baby, and he was pissed when, after four years of sitting on his ass being pissed at basically nothing, they called him up for a special project and then refused to tell him anything more.

They even refused to tell him the name of his drift-compatible rookie.

"What is the deal with this kid, anyway?" Charlie demanded his handler, Bailey Tallet, a UN representative of the United States, sitting pretty in a suit she seemed to wear like armor. "There's gotta be something special or else you wouldn't put up with this bullshit."

Bailey gave him a thinly veiled look that demanded he go back to fuming in silence. He did so with a frustrated noise, settling even farther down in his chair, legs stretched out as far as they would go. He was the picture of relaxation and he would be damned if he had to move an inch for the benefit of whatever slacker was going to walk through the door. He closed his eyes.

He didn't have long to wait, and it wasn't hard to fulfill his promise to himself.

Even as the door opened and Bailey moved her chair back to stand in greeting, Charlie remained the very image of laziness, arms crossed at his chest, eyes closed. He listened to the sound of the rookie walking in, his footsteps stopping abruptly as he entered. He sucked in a hard gasping breath and then released it, slowly. Then there was the sound of weight being settled on the other reclining chair, and Charlie held onto his composure as the headset was lowered over his close-cropped hair.

"You ready, rookie? They told you all the rules?" he asked in the general direction of his partner, eyes still closed.

"Do you even remember the rules, old man?" the voice that responded was male, young, and vaguely familiar. Sharp and acidic.

Before Charlie could retort the countdown began.

* * *

Charlie had to admit, the drift was strong from the start.

There was the physical response, of breathlessness with no source, a slight tingling in the fingertips as blood flow was temporarily rushed to the brain, a slight bit of vertigo, although not so strongly they would collapse when they drifted standing.

Images began to bleed, diffusing together at such a rapid pace it was like focusing on memories of a single heartbeat, but there was a few highlights that jumped out, flashes and moments of a child and a teenager and all the strong moments of pain and regret, and he knew that the rookie was getting the same from him, making the experience of spying on a lifetime a little less awkward. The strength of the emotions and sights was very, very strong, stronger than anything Charlie had had with Finn, and he let it rush on by without making a grab for anything specific.

But then, something different.

The hard, incorporeal rush of colors and sights diminished suddenly; it was given weight, and Charlie felt his stomach suddenly drop. His heart rate accelerated as he realized what was happening and he withdrew as quickly as he could from the drift, clinging to his own memories, lest he get pulled down as well..

He opened his eyes and turned his head, almost dislodging the headset. The rookie was still lying there, eyes locked straight ahead, on the ceiling. "Kid! Kid, don't go after specific memories, _do you hear me?_ Don't chase the R.A.B.I.T.—_fuck._"

He turned his head to tell the Op to cut the tie and pull the rookie back, but then the young man turned to him, blond hair looking smooth and edgeless, eyes gleaming and familiar. Too familiar.

"Come on," he said, goading, and even though Bailey was shouting at him not to do it, Charlie tightened his jaw and dove back in, let the memories take weight and pull him under, arms straining for a fight.

He opened his eyes and he was in a living room, decorations outdated and the television looking second-hand. A young boy played on the carpet with toy jaegers and a tiny model kaiju, not based on any existing one, Charlie was able to tell at once, just an approximation of the wildness, the destruction, made tiny to fit into a toddler's hand.

Behind the young boy, watching with a serene look on his face, was the rookie. He stood there, shorter than average, in his training blacks like all the others in the academy for pilots.

Charlie didn't dwell long on the fact that anyone chasing R.A.B.I.T.s was never physically there in their normal age or dress, and immediately called out "What the hell are you doing?!" He formed fists of his hands.

The rookie looked up, his strangely familiar eyes now hooded beneath a sarcastically raised eyebrow. "You really don't recognize me?"

"Am I supposed to?" Charlie asked, exasperated. "We need to get out of here, however you got here in the first place—"

"Give it a minute," he cut him off, and then stepped aside as the front door opened, revealing a tired woman with faded blonde hair and kind blue eyes.

Charlie stopped breathing. The memory swam around him, and he walked forward in a daze, watching but not comprehending as a very familiar woman took the boy into her arms and picked him up. She carried him past Charlie, into the kitchen, not seeing him.

He looked once again to the rookie.

"M-Max?" he stuttered, not accepting, not yet. It had been too long. Longer than forever.

Max, his son, with perhaps a bit of him in his jaw and shoulders, gave a grim, cold grin and a consenting nod. "Now you're getting it."

He brushed past him and walked into nothing, dissolving into the drift, and taking the memory with him.

* * *

Charlie came back to reality to the sensation of the headset sliding from his head as he sat up, looking around and feeling the post-drift headache set in around his neck and shoulders. He looked to Max, sitting up as well and wincing, face contorted. Meanwhile, Bailey was making a racket at the Op on duty and the man who had arrived with Max, his handler and trainer in the academy, berating him.

"Why didn't this show up in the background check?" she demanded.

"We didn't look too far, once we found the initial drift compatibility to be so high…" he tried to say, but Bailey was nothing if not scary as hell when mad.

"The compatibility was high because they're _related_!" she hissed, and pulled back one arm like she was about to hit him. Max stood up like he was about to stop her, but swayed heavily and sat back down, face pale.

Charlie stepped in.

"It's alright," he said, standing and cracking his neck, "It's fine. No one was hurt, we were just… shaken a little."

He looked to Max with a meaningful look.

"Yeah," the young man said, "Yeah, just… shaken." He seemed a bit confused, but it gradually faded away to something more like smug triumph. A twisted, proud smile, that Charlie could remember seeing in the mirror, as photographs of himself sitting on Noisy Boy's foot in his flight jacket.

Charlie looked at Bailey, who still had lines of anger etched on her face.

"He's my co-pilot," he said, and his tone left no room for argument.

* * *

Max wasn't surprised when Charlie went looking for him after their experimental drift together. In fact, he made sure to sit in his bunk with the door open, giving the older man easy access when he finally tracked him down.

Charlie wasted no time, shutting the door and standing with his muscled arms crossed over his chest. "What the hell was that?"

Max, sitting on his bed, looked up. "I chased the R.A.B.I.T.," he said bluntly. "I'm just better at it than most people."

"No, that wasn't just some R.A.B.I.T. chase. You went looking for that specific memory, and then you brought it to me. That's not normal. How did you do it?"

Max shrugged, an easy roll of his shoulders, and Charlie sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You are your mother's child," he sighed, and then sat down in Max's desk chair. Then he winced, checking to make sure that his turn of phrase wasn't causing any problems. Judging by Max's look of disinterest, it wasn't. "Look, kid…"

"My name," Max cut in acidly, "Is _Max_, not _kid._ And I don't want to hear anything you have to say."

"Well, too bad," Charlie barked. "You're my co-pilot. We've got one of the highest drift compatibilities ever seen, and they're putting us in their new pet project, whatever the hell it is. We need to talk, because if we drift again without clearing any of this up, it's going to end badly."

Max looked away and tightened his jaw. Charlie flinched inwardly, having done that same gesture of submission countless times in his life before. The more he watched how Max moved, it became clearer he got his looks from his mother, but his temperament from him. How that would work in a jaeger in a battle situation, only time could tell.

"Your mother… I loved her very much. Alright? Don't ever doubt that."

Max gave him a look in response that told him exactly how much he doubted that.

Charlie sighed. What was he thinking, agreeing to let this kid inside his head in situations that could get them killed? "I just want to clear up any problems between us. Honestly. I mean, there must be something, your mother told you about me being a pilot, that made you want to join up…"

The look Max shot him in response was incredulous. "Alright. You want to clear things up? Here's one for starters: I'm not here for you. Piloting is good money, fame, and saving people. How could I say no to that? You just showed up."

Charlie gave a small groan and wearily closed his eyes. "That's how it's gonna be, huh?"

"Frankly you're not my dad. Sure, you're responsible for me and all that, but when you really get down to it you're just a stranger. A co-worker. Let's keep it that way."

"You're a smart-ass, you know that?" Charlie snapped.

"I'm perfectly aware," Max replied, standing. "Now get out of my room."

Charlie couldn't help a small smile from appearing. "Now you're really starting to sound like my son."

The look on Max's face encouraged him to beat a hasty retreat.

* * *

"_How exactly _are you expecting to pilot a jaeger with your long-lost son?" Bailey demanded of him the next morning, on their way to the training area for their first day of physical trials. Normally with such a strong drift test run they could have forgone the physical aspect, but considering the new information come to light, they wanted to be sure that there wouldn't be any issues with the physical aspect of piloting.

"Carefully," Charlie said in mock seriousness, and Bailey gave a swift punch to one of his arms.

"I'm serious. Have you two even talked about… what happened with his mother?" Normally Charlie would have been flattered with the amount of care and worry in her voice, but he had caught himself tightening his jaw in response to it, and noticing that small connection to his son made him only weary.

"We sat down and had a short talk after we drifted," he said evenly. "We've agreed to keep our relationship businesslike."

Bailey almost stopped walking for half a minute before scoffing and walking with longer striders to keep up with Charlie. "You're kidding. You've never seen your son before, he turns up as one of the highest possible drift compatible pilots for you, like, _impossibly _high, and then during your first drift together he chases a _R.A.B.I.T_…."

Charlie stopped himself before he could tighten his jaw.

"… and you just agree to keep it professional." She sounded fifty shades of doubtful, with a few hints of mockery tossed in for flavor.

"Yeah, pretty much. Neat, huh?" Charlie flashed her his biggest shit-eating grin as he pushed his way into the gym, the floor covered in mats. Max, in a deviation from his current precedent of being late to everything, was already there, getting his knuckles taped by an attendant before pulling on a pair of boxing gloves.

"No staffs?" Charlie asked, pleasantly surprised.

Max barely looked at him. "I have boxing experience, and so they think this will be a better judge for out physical compatibility."

"For this project, we're looking for something different than anything we typically look for in a physical compatibility test," Bailey informed them both as Charlie shrugged out of his flight jacket and was given a roll of tape to wrap around his hand, waving off the attendant who offered help.

"Are you going to tell us what it is you're looking for?" he ribbed her.

She gave him a look.

"Of course not," he sighed, ripping the tape with his teeth and starting on the other hand. "Tell me, are we _ever _going to know exactly what it is we're training for?" Max, across the room, perked up in interest in her answer.

"Mr. Kenton," Bailey said, her voice dripping with sweetness, "I am just a representative of the United States government and have no idea about classified information."

"That means she's part of the committee behind this whole thing," Charlie said across the room to Max, who couldn't help a small smile. Bailey glared and took out a clipboard, as did several people who looked like scientists. One was the Op from their neural handshake.

"When you're ready, Mr. Kenton. Mr. Kenton." Bailey looked at both Charlie and Max in turn, and they both tightened their jaws, nearly in unison.

They squared up at the middle of the room, touched gloves, and fell back into defensive positions. "I don't know if you're aware, but I was a middle weight boxing champ back in the day," he said.

"_Waaaay_ back in the day," Max replied easily, and Charlie straightened, about to snap something about respect, and Max darted out a straight jab to the face, taking him by surprise.

Charlie fell back into position, sputtering slightly. "You're ruthless," he informed his son in a wounded tone, trying to suppress any feelings of pride.

Max smiled brightly in return. "I'm _pragmatic_," he replied, and went for another jab. Charlie cut in and got a hook right in his abdomen, releasing Max's breath in a loud huff. The young man backed off, hunched over, trying to get his bearings.

Charlie turned to the gathered scientists. "Isn't this considered child abuse?" he asked, and barely managed to fend off Max getting his breath back and coming after him.

They crashed together again and again, testing weaknesses and pushing edges. Max tried out Charlie's low hook and caught him by surprise, and Charlie retaliated with Max's habit of quick jabs to vulnerable areas. Again and again Max would copy Charlie's moves, and they continued on and on for what seemed like hours, losing ground and then gaining it. Blood dripped down Max's nose, and Charlie could feel his left eye swelling shut.

"Alright! Alright!" They both skidded to a half-stop at Bailey's call, and they looked over to the panel of scientists and representatives, all scribbling away in excitement. Bailey was grinning at them widely.

"You're in," she said. And then, before Charlie could pant out a reply, she said, "You get to meet Atom."

* * *

**Yeah, so, I'm going to be writing more. Review?**


	2. Chapter 2

**Aaand, here we go. Thanks for the reviews and favorites!**

* * *

"Atom Dancer?" Charlie questioned in an unimpressed tone. Bailey and her team of Ops and engineers were leading him and Max down a twist of hallways barricaded with extra-strength doors requiring retinal scans, fingerprint scans, the swiping of many colorful identification badges.

"Your new jaeger," Bailey said over her shoulder, in a way that didn't call for further questioning.

Charlie twisted his mouth and fell to the back of the pack, where Max was walking along, not listening or paying attention, eyes focused on the tips of his shoes as he probed a cut on his lip with his tongue. A small trickle of blood continued down his chin, and Charlie would have felt guiltier over it if his eye wasn't currently throbbing in beat with his heart, and he couldn't really see out of it from Max's punches.

But, still. "Hey." Max looked up at Charlie briefly. "Stop picking at that. It won't have a chance to close and it'll keep bleeding."

Max considered him for a moment before he gave the raw edge a final once-over with his tongue and then stopped with visible intention. He muttered something that might have been a thank-you, but Charlie couldn't be sure.

He was sure, however, that the next words out of Max's mouth were "Sorry for kicking your ass, old man." He had that smug grin on his face again, bruised and battered as it was.

"Hey, who you calling old man?" Charlie replied and rammed one elbow into a bruise on Max's arm. "Respect your elders, kid. In a real match I'd hand your ass to you on a silver platter."

"Yeah, right," Max snorted, and sped up walking, making sure to press his shoulder into a bruised section of Charlie's back as he walked past. He winced and made a note to get back at him later.

Their party finally came to a complete stop at a lift. They loaded up and with countless more codes and passwords typed in, they moved down.

"Atom Dancer is a secret project that's been in the works almost from the beginning of the kaiju war," Bailey said as they moved down at a swift speed. "An incredibly advanced AI that requires pilots of incredible drift compatibility strength, the AI is more integrated to the drift experience than ever before. In fact, Atom is going to learn from your drift and take on automatic battle responses based on your own fighting moves."

"So that explains the different physical tests," Charlie commented. Bailey nodded.

"Right. We didn't want you to be compatible in the normal, equal way. We wanted a pair that would grow and learn from each other the same way Atom would grow."

They reached their floor, far below the Shatterdome's launch bays. As they all piled out of the lift, Charlie took Bailey by the arm and spoke low and quiet in her ear.

"Why me?" he asked. "You could have gotten anyone else. Why me?"

Bailey looked at him, a bit of sadness in her eyes. He thought for a minute that she was going to speak, but then she walked away, out of his grasp.

"You know that being cryptic isn't attractive?" he demanded of her back as she disappeared down the hallway towards the hangar. Max gave him a look over his shoulder, and Charlie sighed, following along behind at a slow, lazy pace.

Charlie couldn't help the long, low whistle he gave when he arrived at the end of the hallway, at the top of a staircase, open to the hangar. Atom Dancer was small, so far as jaegers go, but there was a sculptured look to him that was almost humanoid. He didn't have many open ports or extended pieces of metal, streamlining him.

Beside Charlie at the railing, Max squinted and tilted his head. "Is it supposed to be smiling?"

"Is _he _supposed to be smiling," Charlie corrected, and began to head towards the loading bay. "Show some respect."

He could almost _hear _how Max rolled his eyes.

They were suited up in a brand new set of pilot's armor, a matte silver colored plate with a dark grey prep suit underneath. Max, Charlie noticed, couldn't keep an excited look off of his face as he was screwed into his armor for the first time.

Charlie picked up his helmet and frowned at it. It was more of a headband really, with a face plate that dropped down only over his eyes. The headband itself was a reddish brown color of brushed metal, and it fit perfectly around the crown of his head. He fitted it on, and the screen came alive with readings and scans. He looked at Max through it, and the kid was looking like he just got a pony for Christmas as he looked around through the helmet with an awed look on his face.

Charlie couldn't keep a smile off his own face as the two made their way into the Conn-Pod, their feet hooking easily into the foot hydraulics. "Prepare for drop," their Ops announced over the comm, and the countdown began. At zero, Max sucked in a hard breath and the head of Atom dropped several stories onto the massive body of the jaeger, shaking and trembling slightly as it was hooked into the interface. Charlie's brow furrowed. So far, the process was fine, but there was something missing, and he didn't have to be in the drift to know that Max had the same idea.

They stood and continued to wait in awkward silence.

"Well?" Bailey's voice came over their comm., "Are you boys ready for the drift?"

"No?" Max tried, sounding like a confused student in math class fishing for the right answer.

"No?" Bailey repeated. "Why not?"

"Your engineers forgot the hand controls, Bailey," Charlie called out helpfully to the viewing area above the hangar. Max nodded alongside, arms hanging empty at his sides. They weren't even hooked into the usual components of arm controls, and there were no handsets coming up to meet them.

"There are no hand controls," she quipped. "Atom Dancer is so closely drifted with you that minor motor functions carry over automatically."

Max and Charlie gave each other mirrored impressed looks.

"So are you boys ready or not?" Bailey's voice was thin-pressed.

"Yes ma'am," Max stepped in.

"It's safe, right? This new kind of drift?" Charlie asked, even as he felt the Pons interface begin to start up.

"Completely," Bailey replied glibly.

"So you've tested it before?"

"Not quite," she said, and there was an audible click as she took the comm. offline.

Alone in the silent Conn-Pod, Max and Charlie shared a look. The drift was starting to climb, and any second now they would go under.

"Don't go chasing R.A.B.I.T.s," Charlie said, intending it as a joke, but his tone was a bit worried. Max barely glanced at him as he turned to the front of the Conn-Pod and flexed his shoulders.

"I've got it under control," he said. "Trust me."

The rush came over them, of numb fingers and heavy heads, and the drift began. There was wariness coming from Charlie, and he braced for the blend of memories and emotions to become solid like they had in the drift exercise, but from Max was all indifference. It was as if the fluid motion of his memories was armored; certain pieces were barred behind doors in a long hallway, and Charlie had no intention of hunting those R.A.B.T.s down.

As one, father and son opened their eyes, memories melding, but there was something else there, in the background, a watcher and a listener with no memories of their own.

_Atom_, Charlie's mind assigned a name to it. Max echoed it slightly, a bit more curious, beginning to pull towards it, but the crackle of Bailey's comm. coming back online snapped him back into the present.

"All right, boys, it may be a bit disorienting a bit at first, and a little stranger than any simulators you may have seen, Max. Charlie, this isn't Noisy Boy. This is an entirely new kind of drift."

Charlie grunted and experimentally raised his right arm, palm down and fingers spread. In his periphery he saw Max doing the same. And, on the HUD, the right arm of the jaeger slowly came up. In the drift, it was hard to tell whose motions were whose; there was no leader to the dance, only two minds pushing and pulling from the other.

Their extended hand tightened, and Charlie could feel the push of Max's mind on the action. Automatically he shifted back into a defensive boxing position, and the jaeger responded quickly, so quickly Charlie had to take a moment to wonder where it had gotten the instruction from; across his mind, Max exuded the same gentle confusion.

Together, the left arm came up into position, and there were muffled noises of excitement from the Ops room, and then Bailey's voice came on, cool and clear.

"Very good, boys. Now, we'll have time to go over weapon specs later, but for now we want you to get used to the new form of drifting slowly. We're ending the neural handshake now."

When the drift separated, Max and Charlie both gasped, because along with the normal resounding gap of the mind that came with an ended drift, there was an extra component missing. The watcher, _Atom,_ was gone.

"Holy shit," Charlie said.

"You said it," Max sighed, and when his feet were free the first thing he did was sit down on the floor of the Conn-Pod. "That was… different." He looked to Charlie for clarification. "That was different, right?"

It took a moment for Charlie to remember that unlike him, Max had never seen the inside of a jaeger until now, and never had drifted with anyone else. Noisy Boy had been different, like a suit you wore, not an extension of yourself, and Finn hadn't been so close inside Charlie's mind; they were in tandem, yes, but there was none of the silent agreement that came with drifting with Max.

"Yeah," Charlie said shortly, and held out a hand for Max to stand.

The young man stood on his own, rubbing one hand across the back of his neck. "Think it'll get any less… weird?" he asked.

Charlie thought long and hard as they walked together out of the Conn-Pod. "Nope," he said, and the snort that Max gave in response was almost disrespectful. Almost, but not quite.

* * *

Charlie didn't expect Bailey's "top secret project" to remain secret for long. Nothing cultivated gossip like a Shatterdome, after all. The looks that followed him as he entered were expected as well; he was the infamous Charlie Kenton, brought back for an unexplained, secret reason.

What Charlie didn't expect was Finn.

"Hey! Charlie-Boy!"

The call made Charlie stop dead in his tracks as he made his way across the mess hall towards the kitchens for his lunch. The hangover of the drift informed him that Max was also hungry, and bee lining for the food. Their shared hunger only made the quest for food more important.

But this was paramount.

Charlie turned slowly on his heels, fighting to keep his face neutral as the black man approached him from his table, dressed in civilian clothes and wearing a visitor's pass card around his neck. "Charlie!" Finn called out as he got closer.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't put your lights out," he replied.

Finn stopped in his tracks. The warm look on his face cooled. "So that's how it's gonna be, huh?"

Charlie nodded without a single flicker of remorse. "That's how it's gonna be."

"Frankly I thought you'd be happy to see an old friend now that you're back in the game," Finn said bluntly.

"The same old friend that got me taken out of the game," Charlie replied, acidic.

Finn frowned, eyebrows coming together. Charlie could sense the fight coming, and was ready. He had been waiting a year to take out his rage at his ex-copilot who had betrayed him. That was what it was. A straight betrayal.

"You were a bad bet, brother," Finn said, almost as an explanation. "And I pity the dumbass who agrees to let you in their head."

Charlie winced as his head ached and he knew that across the hall, Max was grinding his teeth and tightening his jaw.

Finn noticed. "Holy hell, they've already found a sucker, haven't they?" he gave a short laugh. "Damn, I wonder if he knows that you'll kill him, yet."

Charlie lunged for him, but it was Max's rage in his fists. _I CAN HOLD MY OWN_, his mind was calling out like a stubborn child, and Charlie stumbled, a head rush keeping him unsteady on his feet. He had never experienced a drift hangover like this before.

_An entirely different drift_, Bailey had called it.

Understatement.

Charlie, swaying, stood upright, and glared over his shoulder at Max, who, across the mess hall, was leaning heavily against the wall, energy spent. Finn huffed and shook his head. Without another word he walked out, probably to whatever task had him on base in the first place. Even though he had chosen to retire, Finn was still an important player in the great game of underground jaeger politics.

Charlie stood there, fuming silently, when he heard the loud eruption of laughter from another table. He glanced over and saw two pilots seated there, surrounded by their support crew, although there was a definite space between them and their technicians.

They were a man and a woman, and against the codes of safety she had a long waterfall of brown hair cascading down her back. Her partner was Asian and had gelled and spiked his black hair into a perfect statue of modern looks. Both of them were looking at him, mouths bared in smiles mocking and sharp.

He frowned at them, keenly aware of the show he had just put on. "Something funny?" he barked.

They shared an amused look before the woman spoke up. Her accent was Russian. "You are Charlie Kenton," she said lightly, "Noisy Boy's first pilot."

The realization hit him like a slap. "And you're Farra Lemkova."

She looked smug and impressed that he recognized her. She had replaced Finn as his pilot, but then they had kicked him out before they would drift together and had given Farra to another young hotshot… Tak Mashido, Charlie summoned up the name; the young man sitting across the table from her, who turned back to his rations and refused to even acknowledge that Charlie was there. And then they had turned over his Noisy Boy to the pair, just kids, untested, unworthy… Charlie, still burning with the aftermath of Max's rage, curled his hands into fists.

She noticed. If anything, Farra's smile became wider.

"I heard that they needed a test dummy for a new project," she said lightly, "I was only laughing at how they couldn't keep you away."

Tak smiled into his cup.

A headache beat at Charlie's temple and he dug his nails deep into his palms. This little girl was trying her hardest to cop a rise out of him, and after his show with Finn he was very close to giving her what she wanted.

"Hey." Max appeared, looking pale at Charlie's side. He had a tray piled high with enough food for two, having sprinted through the food line. "Let's get out of here," he said, not taking his eyes off of Farra and her shark's smile.

Tak turned around in his seat, looking them up and down, and then with a smug look turned to Farra. "They got his bastard son in on it, too," he said, as if they weren't standing right there. Farra had a moment to look surprised as she scrutinized Max's appearance, comparing it to Charlie before smiling and laughing with incredulity.

Charlie had his eyes on Max, who tightened his jaw and narrowed his eyes. He could sense the rage and anger racing through Max; he mirrored it, but he hoped that Max could hold onto his temper. They didn't need a scene; didn't need to give them what they wanted.

"Hey, Ms. Lemkova…" Max said, his voice sweet and kind. She kept a neutral face. Max took one half-step closer to her table, and then, with one swift motion, tossed down his food tray. It landed upside-down, and the huge pile of food splattered out in all directions, straight into Farra's exposed chest and Tak Mashido's lap.

"Enjoy your lunch," Max said into the stunned silence, and then there was an explosion of Japanese and Russian curses, and a few confused technicians were standing up, not understanding what was going on.

Charlie wrapped one hand around Max's upper arm and pulled him away. "Run. _Now_," he said, and they broke into a sprint at the same time, leaving the mess and the rabble behind them.

Charlie had a sinking feeling that they wouldn't be able to outrun that fiasco forever.

* * *

**I tried to make their pilot suits look like Atom from Real Steel, ehh.**

**Also, subplot is figuring out exactly why Charlie was taken out of the jaeger program. And why Finn retired. Hint: it relates to Max and his good luck hunting R.A.B.I.T.s**

**Please, please review!**


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